


like hollywood stars

by skittidyne



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Death, M/M, Reapers, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 05:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittidyne/pseuds/skittidyne
Summary: Here's the setting: Two gods of death never walk into a bar together.(( or: oikawa is a god of violent ends, and iwaizumi is a god of mercy killings, and they meet only rarely ))





	like hollywood stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlumTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/gifts).



> (( happy holidays to the spectacular [ellie](http://plumfragments.tumblr.com/)!! i know it's a little late, but i hope the fic & the holidays treat you well~ ))

It’s rare that they get to see one another.

Iwaizumi is already there, standing in amidst the bodies, not touching a thing. He looks good. Oikawa can’t remember how many years it’s been since he’s gotten to see him in more than just passing.

“Here’s the setting,” Oikawa announces, using his thumbs and forefingers to make a frame, like movie directors will stereotypically do given another century and a half. It doesn’t matter that Iwaizumi beat him here. It doesn’t matter that he knows exactly as much as Oikawa.

This is just what they do.

“They’re almost all dead,” Oikawa begins, stepping through the corpses and those still faintly stirring, “and the hero of this sad story is about to make a choice.”

There is a man standing next to Iwaizumi, and there is another man at their feet, reaching up to him with a hand full of bloody and broken fingers. He will not survive. The standing man probably will, but cold and disease are a constant threat. He has a good dagger, and he has a dear friend who is suffering before him.

“I wonder what he will pick!” Oikawa loudly announces, arms spread, and he picks his way through the bodies without getting a drop of blood on his patent leather shoes.

They both know what the standing man will pick.

Two gods of death never walk into a bar together.

A god of mercy killings and a god of violent ends meet like magnets repelling each other. They near, once in awhile, but they end up pushed away again a moment later. The two gods know each other. The two gods have known each other for a long, long time, and the two gods will continue to know each other for as long as there is death to govern and souls to shepherd.

With a cry so agonized it could move even the dead surrounding them, the standing man ends his dear friend’s suffering.

Iwaizumi extends a hand down to the soul.

He only looks at Oikawa then.

His eyes are clear and dry—they always are. But he looks haggard. (As he always does.) He clutches his new soul with a tight grasp, and he looks at Oikawa like he looks into the very darkest pits of him.

“I’ve missed you,” Iwaizumi tells him.

Oikawa doesn’t have a heart, and never has, but he would gladly give into the metaphor and rip it out of his chest to offer to Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi would have no use for it. Oikawa would give it even so. He doesn't understand it, and that thrills him.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Oikawa says, and he does not step closer now. He stands, helplessly, in amongst all the souls he has yet to reap. He cannot go to him, cannot follow him out.

“Stay well, Tooru,” Iwaizumi tells him as he passes him.

“See you, Hajime,” Oikawa replies. His words reach out since he cannot. He imagines he feels a whisper of warmth when Iwaizumi passes him, but that’s human silliness, too, of course.

 

—

 

Oikawa absolutely had not expected Iwaizumi to show up.

He’s reclining in the corner booth, heavy boots propped up on the table, arms spread wide over the back of the blood-splattered leather. He sits up completely when Iwaizumi trudges in. He already looks like he’s seen enough bloodshed to last centuries, but they’re still young, for gods.

Iwaizumi stops just inside the door, mindful of the shattered glass, and fixes Oikawa with a baleful look. He looks like he doesn’t want to be here.

“Here’s the setting,” Oikawa offers like an apology. He puts his thumbs and forefingers together, and pans over the horrific scene. Police haven’t gotten here yet, and they’ll be in no hurry. “This restaurant had been a front for a family of the Italian mafia. A rival family shot everyone here, customers and staff and mobsters alike, and sped off. It will be forty-five minutes until the police come, and before that, the rival family will be back to comb through the remains. Everyone here will die.”

Slowly, painfully. The question lingers in the air between them.

_Why are you here, then?_

Iwaizumi looks down at a dead child, fallen off the stool. She’d been eating ice cream. Her mother is still slumped over onto the bartop, onto her own dish.

“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi tells him.

Oikawa bares his teeth at him and tells himself it’s a grin. “Hollywood will _love_ this sort of thing.”

Iwaizumi walks through the death and destruction and not a speck of its pain sticks to him. He is dressed lightly this time, like he might have been living the high life in the Middle East before getting suddenly transported across the globe.

Oikawa watches, rictus smile slowly fading, as Iwaizumi steps over to him, then seats himself in the booth across from him.

It’s like they’re on a date.

Oikawa knows Hollywood loves those, too.

“In twenty-six minutes, a member of that rival family is going to come and find his childhood friend. That woman over there,” Iwaizumi explains and nods over to one of the waitstaff, curled up behind the counter. She’s bleeding, slowly, from a hole in her stomach. “I’m here for her.”

“If she was still working as a waitress, she could have taken our orders,” Oikawa hums. The souls he must take itch at him, but they can wait a few more minutes. He’s enjoying Iwaizumi’s proximity. “I would get ice cream. They have four flavors here.”

“Chocolate would be best,” Iwaizumi tonelessly agrees.

“We could share a sundae,” Oikawa says and beams across the table at him. He laces his fingers in front of himself and sets his chin atop. “With extra cherries on top! That sounds delicious.”

Gods do not need to eat. Gods _do not_ eat.

Oikawa wonders, sometimes, what it might taste like, though.

He can’t remember the last time they just had _time_ to themselves, however, so there is no conversation to relax back into. There is no small talk. There are no confessions.

Oikawa does get up, go over to the counter, and retrieve a jar of cherries, though.

“Did you know you can tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue?” he asks, and pushes the jar across their table without taking one himself.

Iwaizumi eyes him, then the jar, and doesn’t touch it. He looks a bit as if he’s afraid it might bite him.

Oikawa unscrews the lid and takes a bright red cherry out with the same sort of fear he’s seen humans handle grenades with. He takes a deep breath he does not need before carefully, _carefully_ sticking out his tongue and placing it upon it. He maintains eye contact with Iwaizumi the entire time.

Iwaizumi watches him like Oikawa is the only point in the universe that matters.

Oikawa doesn’t know if it’s good, or bad, or even if he’s going to get sick from it, but he knows that while sitting there, with Iwaizumi’s full attention on him, allowed just a moment together before duty takes them from each other again, Oikawa decides that he _loves_ cherries.

When he reaps the souls, some of them late, it is with an artificially red smile and a new memory to cherish.

 

—

 

“Oh, no,” Oikawa says as soon as he steps onto the cold, iron bridge.

Tendou waves at him, a coy little wiggle of his fingers.

Oikawa wrinkles his nose. Iwaizumi watches the two humans and ignores Tendou so blatantly it feels like a physical wall.

“Why are _you_ here?” Oikawa asks. He puts his arms out to balance as he walks down the girder, though he doesn’t need it. Just like he doesn’t need to walk at all.

“They’re in love,” Tendou says, gesturing to the couple on the edge of the bridge. “They believe they’re in love so wholly that I’ve been following them for the week leading up to this. Even Toshi tried to pull me away, but it’s real, I tell you.”

“They’re going to kill themselves,” Oikawa says, with disgust, “and the gods think that’s _love_?”

“Love enough to warrant my presence.”

“So. There are three of us here. For two humans.”

“ _I_ am not a god of death,” Tendou replies with a falsely affronted air.

“Halfway down, she is going to realize that it’s a mistake,” Iwaizumi says, eyes still only on the humans.

That’s why Oikawa is here.

“He is going to die thinking it’s a mercy,” Iwaizumi adds. And that is why _he_ is there.

“I’m gone the moment they jump, actually. Isn’t that terrible?” Tendou says with a laugh. He rocks back against the bridge, kicking his legs out, and flicks at the skirt of the woman. “But still, it was love, for awhile.”

“Does love matter _this_ much?” Oikawa asks. He leans over far enough to see the water far, far below. The woman is going to make a very ugly corpse. It is actually rare that he deals with water, however, so he can appreciate the novelty.

“Oh, you think love _doesn’t_ matter?” Tendou asks.

“Can you both just. Shut up.”

Oikawa sighs, and marches past the humans and other two gods, arms still out wide for balance. He turns at the end of the girder, and only when he comes back, does he put his fingers and thumbs together. “Here’s the setting, you two. A couple—in _love_.”

Tendou claps. Oikawa makes another disgusted noise.

“Down on their luck, _tragically_ in love, the narrators would say. It’s better to end it themselves, on their own terms! It would be a mercy, it would end their suffering in this cruel, cold world!” Oikawa puts a hand to his forehead and pretends to swoon, floating off the girder. He hangs upside-down in front of Iwaizumi. His hood and scarf dangle over his hair, and Oikawa smiles brightly at him, despite Iwaizumi’s flat stare. “But the twist to our love story is that one of our heroes _doesn’t_ want to end her suffering, after all. Does that make me the villain?”

“Aren’t you always?” Tendou asks.

Iwaizumi can be crude, but he would never ask that. No god of death would ask that of another. “You get to have a role, for once,” Iwaizumi says instead, and Oikawa’s grin brightens, just for a moment, before he swings down and around to float cross-legged in front of their shared couple.

“Hajime always gets to be the angel of mercy. There are a lot of movies about that, did you know?” Oikawa asks Tendou, though his eyes remain on Iwaizumi’s. He has missed those deep, dark eyes. Oikawa had seen a forest, once, before an invading army had set it all on fire. But the pine needles in the darkest part reminds him still of Iwaizumi’s eyes.

He thinks he’d loved that forest.

“I’m a god of death, same as you,” Iwaizumi levelly replies, never breaking their eye contact.

The humans jump, Tendou vanishes, and mirroring the couple, Iwaizumi and Oikawa take each other’s hands as they float down to collect the souls.

 

—

 

Oikawa sits in the back row of a movie theater with his bare feet propped up on the seat in front of him.

He _never_ gets to see movies like this. It’s thrilling.

They’ve changed so much since the pretty silver screens and glamor of old Hollywood, but he’ll be back there soon enough, to pick up yet another jealous husband. But this has its appeal, too. Its darkness seems cozy, somehow.

But Oikawa’s comfort disappears and he sits up ramrod straight when Iwaizumi shuffles down the aisle between the seats. His hands are jammed into his pockets and his frame is slumped, but when he catches sight of Oikawa, he, too, jumps to attention. His wide eyes reflect some of the light from the screen. Oikawa has never seen him silhouetted like this before, and he looks beautiful.

He sees why humans would call him an angel.

“What are you doing here?” Oikawa asks.

“That woman,” Iwaizumi says, and points to an older woman three rows from the front. “She has a late-stage cancer and has been thinking about ending things herself.”

Oikawa never feels sympathy for the souls they reap or the lives they leave behind, but he recognizes, on some level, that some deaths are supposed to be sadder than others. At least, the movies say some deaths are supposed to be sadder than others.

He gestures Iwaizumi over until he picks his way down the back row and sits by Oikawa.

They sit, side-by-side, in the back of the dark movie theater.

“I’ve never gotten to watch a movie before,” Oikawa confesses in a whisper. “Never this much of one. Never in an audience like this.”

“What’s it about?” Iwaizumi asks in return. He’s whispering, too. For some reason, that pleases Oikawa. It seems like the proper thing to do in this situation.

“I think it’s about romance. It’s supposed to be about love, at least. There are a lot of pretty scenes in the rain, and the man and the woman are separated by fate,” Oikawa explains, pointing at the screen as each of the protagonists come on. Iwaizumi’s hand rests on the armrest between them, and Oikawa’s attention keeps dipping down to it, to the easy way he relaxes into the seat, like any human would.

Oikawa wishes they would have more of the movie to watch together.

“And here’s _our_ setting,” Oikawa continues, and frames the dark theater in front of them, the silhouettes of human beings they cannot see clearly. “Before half of the movie is over, there will be a bomb, and most of this theater will get caught in it. I’m collecting twenty-three souls today. And you, as usual, get your one.”

“It’s not a contest,” Iwaizumi says, and, very gently, knocks his knuckles against Oikawa’s shoulder.

His entire arm feels alight with feeling from that small point of contact. He has no idea what it means, but he wants _more_.

“Humanity made its choice,” Oikawa hums in agreement. “They’ll always choose carnage over mercy. I’m sorry, Hajime.”

“I’m sorry, Tooru,” he whispers back.

 

—

 

“You will be a very hard worker,” the god of death tells him, and it is Oikawa’s first memory. He stares up into those dark, dark eyes, and wonders why he will need to work so hard. “It is our duty to shepherd the souls of dead humans. You will govern over those taken by violence.”

“Why?” Oikawa had asked him then, and has asked him since then.

He has never gotten an answer that satisfies him, but he has stopped hoping he would. He has stopped caring about what Ushijima tells him anymore.

But he wonders, sometimes, if Iwaizumi had ever questioned things.

He wonders what Iwaizumi’s first memory is. He wonders how hard of a worker Iwaizumi is, how many souls he takes in a year, and if he ever enjoys some times or places more than others. Oikawa wants to know more about him, which is strange, because they’re exactly the same, just in charge of different types of deaths.

“It’s personal preference, isn’t it?” Matsukawa asks, laying on his stomach with his chin in his hands, kicking his feet idly. He watches as below, more humans scream and fall into the river as the bank gives way.

“I miss hot weather,” Hanamaki groans. He lays himself dramatically atop Matsukawa’s back, as if he were a fainting couch. Oikawa and Hanamaki work closely together, as gods of death governing carnage and natural disasters, so he knows that Hanamaki likes movies, too.

Oikawa wonders, but briefly, if Hanamaki has ever gotten the chance to sit in a movie theater and watch something while waiting for the souls. How long do tsunamis take? Earthquakes?

“My personal preference is hot weather,” Hanamaki points out.

“Yes, we understood as much.”

“ _You_ get to go to the deserts!”

Matsukawa sighs, and ignores the way Hanamaki swats at him. They get to work together frequently, too, Oikawa knows, since Matsukawa is in charge of deaths from temperature. Oikawa has gotten to know him, in times where they would sit in foxholes together and wait for men to die, but he has never quite understood him as easily as others.

“Deserts are boring,” Matsukawa says at length.

“Deserts would be _warm_.”

“Don’t you have an earthquake to get to in California? Isn’t that warm?”

“It’s not the _same_ ,” Hanamaki declares. “I hate earthquakes. Give me a landslide any day. Better yet, give me an avalanche.”

“Those take forever. It’s a lot of sitting around and waiting.”

“I know. I love the downtime, and snow is pretty.”

“Weren’t you _just_ complaining about the cold?” Oikawa asks archly, and Hanamaki literally waves him off.

“Iwaizumi likes the snow,” Matsukawa says, and Oikawa snaps to attention at once.

Matsukawa catches this, and huffs an infuriating little laugh.

 

—

 

“Well, _this_ is an odd scenario for us,” Oikawa says.

Iwaizumi is already busy, following the human running through no-man’s land, and Oikawa lazily floats after them both.

“Here’s the setting,” he announces to a grey sky and muddy ground. “One lone man, despite risk to himself, despite the fact that his friends have tried to talk him down, has had enough of the screaming of those left here.”

Iwaizumi huffs and pulls up another soul. Another hoarse voice silenced by a bayonet. There are still many men left screaming, pleading for either help or for the pain to stop. This single man that Iwaizumi follows, Oikawa is here for him. He will be killed by the entrenched enemies in seventeen minutes. There will be a lot of bullets, from a machine gun, but he will be dead after two. It will be quick.

“Maybe he should be yours, too,” Oikawa says, floating alongside Iwaizumi as he works. “He’s doing a lot here, and his death will be fairly clean.” Certainly cleaner than what Oikawa is used to.

Iwaizumi grits his teeth and keeps working.

Oikawa doesn’t like that he’s not responding. “Are you not used to this many souls at once? I can’t fault you, Hajime, normally you are so _choosy_ with yours—”

“Would you just _shut up_?” Iwaizumi snaps at him.

Oikawa freezes. Iwaizumi looks as if he regrets his sharp words at once, but he does not retract them, and he continues following the human, hauling up soul after soul.

Oikawa sullenly waits in the trench where the soldiers with the machine gun are about to notice the man running around where men shouldn’t.

 

—

 

“Here’s the setting,” Oikawa begins, casting odd shadows from the dancing flames all around them.

Matsukawa is not here for this; jurisdiction for death by fire lies with Kuroo, who is already very busy with the rest of the building. But for this little corner, it’s just theirs.

Iwaizumi sits, cross-legged, and watches as a young mother tearfully struggles to keep her baby from breathing in so much smoke.

“A mother is trying to save her child, but she’s going to realize that there is no saving either of them. Soon, I believe,” Oikawa says and sits down by Iwaizumi.

Iwaizumi nods. His eyes are trained on the mother, not the infant, who has already stopped coughing and gone very still.

“Is it still mercy if it’s an accident?” Oikawa asks softly, as the mother sobs and presses the rag tighter against her baby’s face.

“It’s mercy if it ends suffering,” Iwaizumi replies. Without losing his focus on her, he asks, “Why are you here? I had assumed it would just be Kuroo and I tonight.”

“There’s going to be a beam that breaks and crushes her. It’s soon after she realizes her baby is dead, so wouldn’t that be a mercy?”

Iwaizumi hums, but it’s not really a response.

They sit so close their knees are nearly touching. Oikawa wishes they were. Oikawa wishes a lot of things about Iwaizumi, things he does not know how to articulate, things he knows aren’t meant for gods of death. Not gods of carnage. Not for _them_.

But he still _wants_.

“It’s rare,” Iwaizumi says. His voice is gentle, and quiet, but it still makes Oikawa jump. The mother in front of them chokes on another sobbing cough. “That we’re both here for just one soul.”

“It’s a quiet night, for us,” Oikawa agrees.

“You must enjoy the break.”

“I enjoy seeing you again.”

Iwaizumi glances up at him out of the corner of his eye.

Oikawa presses their knees together, and smiles at him.

 

—

 

The man is screaming when Oikawa arrives.

It is the screaming that will lead to everyone else getting slaughtered.

His fellow soldiers talk amongst themselves, varying degrees of upset, but no one comfortable with the idea of killing the man stuck in the trap with spikes in the pit before them. The jungle is thick and hot around them, but it does not muffle noise.

Iwaizumi sits on the edge of the pit and toes at the spiked trap. “Humans create their own hell,” he says by way of greeting.

“Hajime, you said hell!” Oikawa exclaims in scandalized delight. They aren’t supposed to have opinions, much less knowledge, of what they’re eventually doing with these souls.

“It’s a figure of speech. Humans use it,” Iwaizumi calmly deflects. They both know Oikawa will not tell anyone else. Neither of them speak much to others about their occasional meeting. Oikawa doesn’t know why, since they are both only performing their respective duties, but it has the sort of feeling that old secret love affairs have in old silent films.

He likes it, inasmuch as he can like things.

“Here’s the setting,” Oikawa says, and steps out onto the very tip of one of the spikes. He’s only in thin sandals this time, and his long, loose robe swishes around his knees. He makes sure Iwaizumi is watching as he pans over the scene with his usual finger frame. “We have four minutes before these men get ambushed, because their dear, suffering friend won’t stop his screaming. We have three and a half minutes before these men put their dear, suffering friend out of his misery. We almost match this time, Hajime!”

Iwaizumi’s mouth twitches. He looks tired, but he also looks like he might smile anyway. “Almost,” he agrees. “Is there anything else about the setting this time?”

“Well, you’re shirtless,” Oikawa points out.

Iwaizumi looks down at himself like he’s surprised.

“And I still don’t like guerilla warfare. It’s a lot of work to keep up with.” Oikawa mimes grabbing the screaming man, like _he_ is going to be the one to take his soul, and Iwaizumi starts. Oikawa can’t help but snicker. “Hajime, would I _really_ take something that’s yours?”

“You’ve never tried. You could probably get away with it—you have such a high count that I’m not sure Ushijima would notice.” Iwaizumi’s hands are still raised, halfway up, like he’s about to reach out and bat Oikawa away from his soul to reap.

Oikawa wishes he could reach over and take his hand instead. Humans hold hands. Humans hold a lot of things, actually, something Tendou is fond of going on and on about. The worst is when Kuroo starts in, too.

Following that train of thought, Oikawa hops off of the spikes, and sits down next to Iwaizumi. “Tendou called Kuroo a romantic. Hanamaki told me, and I think I believe him. Imagine it, Hajime, a _romantic_ god of death!” Oikawa leans back on his arms and sighs at the greenery overhead.

“Why is that so hard for _you_ to imagine?” Iwaizumi asks.

His tone of voice causes Oikawa to look at him, puzzled. He doesn’t understand the emphasis, and he _wants_ to understand the intensity in Iwaizumi’s eyes.

A gunshot startles them both.

How funny, gods of death getting startled by their own duty.

Iwaizumi sighs and stands. He steps over the spikes and reaches down to his soul. “I’ll see you around, Tooru.”

Oikawa wishes, now more than before, that he could reach out to him. Instead, all he can say is “Bye, Hajime.”

 

—

 

“What are _you_ doing here?!” Iwaizumi startles, badly, when Oikawa leans through the hospital door.

“I thought you’d be here!” Oikawa happily says and steps into the room. They’re dressed similarly, for once—both of them are in suits, though Iwaizumi looks like he’s dressed for a funeral and Oikawa thinks he’s meant to be a runway model. “You look well, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi looks back to the doctor, standing by the patient’s bedside.

“Quick setting—” Oikawa begins, but Iwaizumi shakes his head, and steps away from the bed, nearer him.

“Why are _you_ here? What’s going on?”

“I’m following the last few humans into the emergency room. There had been a shooting,” Oikawa explains. “I have a few minutes before I have to be back downstairs. But it looks as if you’re about done here.”

Iwaizumi shoots the patient in the bed another look. “Yeah. Almost.”

And he steps further back, until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Oikawa. Oikawa marvels at his solid presence beside him.

“Why are you so shaken? We surprise each other all the time,” Oikawa asks, as gently as he can manage.

It’s a testament to how bad Iwaizumi must be that he does not try to dismiss it. “He was… praying, earlier. For me. Or, well, the angel of mercy, like you’ve called me.”

“Oh, you get worship!”

“It wasn’t worship.” Gods of death aren’t supposed to be worshipped. If they are, Ushijima must step in. Iwaizumi fidgets, uncomfortable, and in an impulsive need to try to comfort him, Oikawa reaches over and grabs Iwaizumi’s hand.

Iwaizumi stares down at their clasped hands. Oikawa does, too; he has managed to surprise even himself, and doubt roils in his belly, eating at his nerves.

But Iwaizumi does not pull his hand away. After a few long, _long_ moments, he shifts his grip so he can return the same pressure that Oikawa is offering him.

“Humanity likes you, or the idea of you,” Oikawa tells him, quietly. They watch as the doctor takes a small bottle off of the tray, and pulls its contents into a syringe. “Humanity likes mercy.”

“Less and less, considering how much work you have,” Iwaizumi grunts.

“Mercy offers hope. Humans like to pray to hope, so there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Iwaizumi tilts his head, toward him, thinking. But Oikawa can’t help but think that if he did it a little more, he could rest his head on his shoulder.

“Hope, huh,” Iwaizumi hums.

Oikawa nods, and his cheek brushes Iwaizumi’s hair.

Iwaizumi squeezes his hand once before he leaves him.

Oikawa smiles against his fingers before heading back downstairs.

 

—

 

“Why do I have to get _accidents_? I think someone else should have jurisdiction over accidents,” Oikawa complains, leaning against the chimney, watching the scene below.

“It is still violent,” Ushijima replies.

Oikawa peers up at him out of the corner of his eye. “And what warrants _your_ presence today? This is only one soul.”

“Violence implies that there is intent behind a death,” Ushijima says in his usual flat, cold tone. “This will be the last accidental death you will reap. You have done much work, and with humanity as it is, you do not need to handle more than you ought to.”

He reaches over, and Oikawa flinches back on reflex. But Ushijima pats his hair, just once, and Oikawa is too stunned to come up with a response.

“Good job, Oikawa,” Ushijima tells him and leaves.

Oikawa remains stunned, leaning against the chimney, even when the soul prickles at him from below to go fetch it. He remains stunned and frozen to his spot even when Iwaizumi drops down onto the roof and grabs his hand.

“Tooru, you have a soul to reap,” Iwaizumi tells him, urgently, and squeezes his hand.

“Ushijima told me I did a good job,” Oikawa numbly replies.

“Of course you do a good job. But that means not letting that soul rot away right now. Get going, I’ll see you later.” Iwaizumi pushes him off the roof, and with his mind still in a haze, Oikawa reaps his last accidental death.

 

—

 

Two gods of death walk into a saloon together.

It isn’t a bar, but Oikawa will take it.

Iwaizumi isn’t afraid to hold his hand now, and Oikawa can see why humans enjoy this so much. It is nice to have a reminder that someone is present in your life, next to you, and you can touch them.

“Here’s the setting!” Oikawa declares, and Iwaizumi releases him with a fond twitch of his lips—a smile, Oikawa swears. Oikawa hops up onto the bartop, throws his scarf dramatically over one shoulder, and frames the saloon’s interior with his thumbs and forefingers together. “Hollywood _loves_ Westerns. Did you know most of them were shot in Italy?”

“That isn’t part of the setting,” Iwaizumi replies, and this time, he does smile a little.

Oikawa steps onto the back of a chair, and it doesn’t wobble beneath him even the slightest bit. “We’re about to have a _shootout_ ,” Oikawa declares, and pulls his fingers out of his frame in order to mime guns. “Humans killing humans over territory, and greed, and lust for power! It’s a Hollywood romance, Hajime!”

“I don’t think that is quite what you mean.”

“And what are _you_ here for?” Oikawa asks, ignoring his commentary entirely.

Iwaizumi sits at the bar and sets his chin on his fist. “I am here for the little girl who was bit by a rattlesnake. The local doctor is going to say he can do nothing for her, and I have eighteen more minutes while the priest gives his last rites.”

“They’ll make movies about this,” Oikawa says and hops down onto the floor. He slides onto the seat nearest Iwaizumi, and he holds his hand again, just because he can.

“Do you think humans will ever make a movie about you?”

“A god of carnage? Certainly not! You’re far more suited to the silver screen.” Oikawa resumes his frame, and puts Iwaizumi squarely in the center. “Humans and gods both adore symbols of hope.”

“Humans and gods both adore hard workers and handsome faces,” Iwaizumi returns. He pulls Oikawa’s hands apart, and laces their fingers together. “How long do you have before you must leave?”

The gunfire begins, outside, and Oikawa doesn’t bat an eye. “Old guns don’t kill very quickly. We have a few more minutes together.”

“Alright,” Iwaizumi says with another small smile.

It’s still rare that they get to see each other, but at least they know how to spend their precious time together, now.


End file.
